My parents married when they were 18. My dad got into alcohol early in their marriage and my mother was the breadwinner. I was born in (January) 1990, the Year of the Snake, in Henan province. There were endless fights between my parents and a lot of my childhood was about trying to avoid the fights.
My mother realised she needed to own a business to make more money – and she’d need it because she ended up having three kids – so she went to the city to work as a waitress and eventually became the manager. She was humble yet aggressively ambitious. She never thought anything was too good for her and would do whatever it took. She set her mind on having a son – that was a measure of a woman’s success. It was the time of the one-child policy and when she had her second baby, my sister, she was fined. She was OK getting fined or fired, she wanted to have more kids. Her third child was a boy, which she was very happy about. We were looked after by my grandparents in the countryside until I was seven, when we moved to the city to be with mum. By that time, she owned and ran her own restaurant.
A young Jiaoying Summers pictured in Linzhou, Henan province, in 1995. Photo: courtesy Jiaoying Summers
She talked her way into me going to a good school in Linzhou. For a year or two I was mocked for my countryside accent and the kids made fun of my outfit. I worked hard at school so the students would respect me, and my mum got me a trendy outfit. She encouraged me to be smart. I invited my classmates to my mum’s restaurant after school to do our homework and we ate her food. I began to get more confident.
I was good at Chinese literature and loved history and art. I wanted to be in the school play, but I couldn’t play the lead because I wasn’t considered attractive. In the West, full lips are considered attractive, but in East Asia dark skin and full lips are considered unattractive on a woman.
My mum helped her niece set up a movie rental business. I went there after school when mum was in the restaurant and my cousin watched me. I had a little desk and chair where I could do my homework while watching dubbed Hollywood movies such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Godfather, All About Eve. It opened my eyes to the world. I saw beautiful black women, Latina women and women of all colours – and they were all beautiful. In China we don’t have this diversity of beauty. I had a confidence that came from nowhere and I thought I was cute.
Summers in 2010, aged 20, at the University of Kentucky. Photo: courtesy Jiaoying Summers
I really wanted to study in the United States. I wanted to be an actress. In China, I knew I didn’t fit the traditional view of beauty. I thought America would be a good place for me to find my voice. I asked my mum, but she didn’t agree. It was a lot of money and she worried about me going by myself. In my last year of high school, I kept asking her. I knew she wouldn’t approve of me studying acting, so I said I’d study English and business and become an international business person. Exasperated, she said if I could get US$20,000 that weekend for the first year of tuition, she would pay for the rest.
